The wild island few will visit but millions pass …

As regular travellers on the Newcastle DFDS ferry to Amsterdam – where crew, meals and standards throughout are exceptional – we glide through the farmlands of Holland, enjoy a fika at the Afsluitdijk Wadden Centre (see last year’s blog), spend a delicious night in Hatten at Gasthof zur Mühle savouring their Schweineschnitzel Holsteiner Art (pictured), and drive on to the bridges of Denmark: The Little Belt and the Great Belt Bridges. The latter is spectacular as it soars high above Storebælt allowing large ships to pass beneath. Saving the best till last, the home run takes us over The Bridge, Øresundsbron.

Last time, we were asked to fill in a questionnaire, entered a lucky draw and won a special trip to Peberholm, the artificial island in Öresund where train and road routes emerge from underwater and rise to the skies on the vast bridge.

The world knows Øresundsbron, whether for its architectural feat or its grisly fictional TV series murders, but few may know, and fewer have ever been walking, on Peberholm. Its name translates as Pepper Isle, marrying nicely with the nearby natural isle of Saltholm (yes you’ve guessed it). Island afficionados will also have spotted that “holm” regularly appears in Scottish maps, reflecting our Nordic connections, especially on Orkney.

We met up in a Malmö car park, boarding a coach with a bunch of fellow “winners” and headed seawards. As the bus drove over Øresundsbron it occurred to us we were going to Denmark with no passports. Oops. Oh well, too late to remedy as our passports were on our desk in Småland. Meanwhile the bridge descended toward Peberholm where we slipped down a small, inconspicuous side road, through a gate and parked by the water’s edge. It’s a very small island of half a square mile so everything is near the water’s edge.

Peberholm is a fascinating experiment with nature. How often is there an opportunity to start an island from scratch and see what happens? This is not re-wilding. This is wilding. Initially there was consternation that local species would be disrupted and pollution caused however in the event the opposite occurred and Peberholm has become a haven for wildlife: a shelter, a breeding ground and an undisturbed habitat for many flora and fauna.

It was decided from ground zero that no species would be imported with the intention to follow what nature provided, so seeds were carried to the isle by birds, waves and wind. The seeds germinated, creating gentle shrubland of birch, willow, aspen and cherry, over time growing into strong saplings, providing shelter and food, stabilising the ground and maturing the habitat. We were informed that the initial earth was from the tunnel excavation and from then on, employees’ working boots are sanitised before every shift to ensure, to the best of their ability, that this “natural state” continues and is carefully monitored. Access to the isle is protected by strict laws and it is a nature reserve.

It is not only flora that has established an attractive presence on the isle, there is also an impressive range of bird and animal life including many large and colourful garden and Roman snails, and the very rare European Green Toad. So many waders, seabirds and migratory birds have made their homes here: herons (800 mating pairs), gulls, spoon-billed storks, house martins, geese and ducks of numerous species. The nearest population of spoon-billed storks is in Holland. As our bus slowly circumnavigated the island, we inched our way past freshwater ponds, taking care not to disturb the nesting birds. These deliberately manufactured depressions, naturally providing fresh rainwater for birds, were created by compressing rocks to add strength to the island. Where water is shallow and crashing on the shore, the force is extreme and compressed rocks offer added security to the integrity of the construction.

Interestingly, wilding alone has not worked without human intervention. They originally thought that geese would eat all the grass however there are grasses the geese avoid resulting in trees and shrubs dominating the landscape, preventing waders, who need open landscape for nesting, from reproducing. Without the presence of ruminants (cows or goats), the ground cover was becoming too dense and staff were required to rinse sections from grass, shrubs and trees for the benefit of the waders.

From time to time, we hopped off the bus to explore, avoiding nesting sites, as birds wheeled around us. Some of us were intrigued by the nature whilst others were champing at the bit to climb onto The Bridge.

Øresundsbron is quite simply unimaginably huge. Immense and solid it stands as a tribute to the engineers who created it. The intense traffic from both cars and trains doesn’t seem to affect the wildlife: seals and a huge population of cormorants are content on the shoreline, and crustaceans shelter underwater, taking advantage of the extra rocks.

Øresundsbron is a double-decker bridge with trains passing under the road. The blast overhead when trains passed by was mind-blowing although funnily enough it didn’t seem to bother the house martins nesting high among the girders. We too were allowed to climb upwards and as the mists rolled in, whit a sicht it was.

Our sincere thanks to the staff of Øresundsbron who were so knowledgeable and enthusiastic. We certainly had the trip of a lifetime, and yes, we were allowed back into Sweden and no one asked for our passports!